Tiny Home Pioneer Graham Hill Lists New SoHo Unit For $750,000

Architect and designer Graham Hill has listed his latest micro-property, at 150 Sullivan St. in SoHo, on the market.

“Happiness is not about stuff,” minimalist renegade Graham Hill said in a recent interview: “It’s about relationships and connection and time.”

Thus is the philosophy behind Hill’s desire to prove that it’s possible to live luxuriously in less than 400 square feet.

An Elon Musk of architecture and design, Hill is again making headlines as his second micro-unit in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood is now on the market for $750,000.

Hill purchased two tiny units in the co-op at 150 Sullivan St. in 2009, which he named LE1 and LE2 while marketing their renovations on LifeEdited, the lifestyle brand and blog he launched in 2010.

After making his fortune off internet companies like Sitewerks and, more famously, the sustainability blog TreeHugger, which sold to Discovery Communications in 2007 for $10 million, Hill became a celebrity in the tiny-home scene.

He bought the 420-square-foot LE1, the building’s unit 11, for $287,000 and hosted a worldwide competition to find a designer to produce his futuristic renovation vision.

The apartment, which cost $365,000 to remodel and sold for $790,000 in 2014, received international attention for its nifty features, which include a retractable TV screen and a movable wall that conceals extra sleeping quarters.

LE2, or unit 33, now listed by Corcoran, is slightly smaller at 350 square feet. And though that makes its listing price roughly $400 above the Manhattan average of $1,733 per square foot, according to recent data from the brokerage Douglas Elliman, "there are lots of places in New York that are $2,000 and up per foot," Graham said.

But, "there are very few places that have that much consideration and thought, so yes it’s going to be a little expensive," he added.

Graham purchased the property for $280,000 and he spent another $250,000 on its two-year renovation.

Among its furnishings are a Murphy bed and six velvet sofas with secret storage compartments that can be pushed together in various arrangements.

“I ended up really going overboard and overspending,” he said of his projects with a laugh. But the results are worth it, he assured.

Among LE2’s cool components are a Hufcor accordion wall that gives soundproofing equal to sheet-rock and a technology system that can be controlled by a smartphone.

The unit is referred to on LifeEdited as a prototype for tiny dwellings, a type of apartment that is comically common in New York City - though “not a lot of it is really well done,” Hill mused.

To practice what he preaches, Hill is living in LE2 until it sells, which he said should be a standard.

“Architects should have to spend a week or a month at minimum in every single thing that they build,” he explained. “It’s so crazy that we can build something and not even experience it.”

It’s not his first venture at living with less, however, as Hill also has a home in Maui that, though a little bigger at 1,000 square feet, is reportedly completely off-grid.

To make the home feel cozy, Hill included a herringbone oak floor, walnut cabinetry and post-industrial marble, along with brass and leather details.

The home offers some of the same elements as LE1, including a full kitchen and dining seating for up to 12 people, but while its younger sibling has a clean, white, post-modern look, Hill wanted LE2 to feel more cozy.

To give it texture and warmth, he added a herringbone oak floor, walnut cabinetry and post-industrial marble from Lithoverde, along with brass and leather details.

His favorite parts of the home, however, are its custom furnishings from Resource Furniture, such as a murphy bed and six velvet sofas that have secret storage compartments and can be pushed together to make an L-shaped sectional or a twin- to queen-sized bed.

The unit even has a full kitchen.

Noting that “every square inch” of the unit was considered in the design process, Hill’s pride in his new micro-baby is audible.

“If you really, fully design your life and are conscious of what you bring into it then you find it easy to manage, organize, find things, clean,” Hill said of tiny-space living. “You create this nice feeling of just having enough but not too much: You’re not overspending and you don’t have a huge environmental footprint.”

After growing up in Queens and going to high school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I started my journalism career as a state politics reporter in Albany, New York. I later became an editor at amNewYork, New York City’s largest daily newspaper, where I covered everythi...